blogging Archives - Page 14 of 24

Bright idea from bit.ly: link bundles

The URL shortening service bit.ly announced Bit.ly Bundles on their blog yesterday. Now, instead of sending one link with a shortened URL, you can send a whole bundle of links.

When you click the bundled link, it opens up in a special Bit.ly Bundles page where you get a rich media preview of every link in the bundle. Here’s an example suggested by bit.ly using this URL: http://bit.ly/9kfiz3. It links to Jauntsetter’s Best of Washington D.C.

This is a way to aggregate, curate, and organize a variety of information on a topic. A bundle of links to your best Thanksgiving recipes, multiple links to the latest announcement from Apple, multiple links to the hottest news in shoelaces – whatever – you get the idea. You click the link, you go the the Bundle page, you choose what you want to read in full.

The Bundle page has a comment box for reactions from people who use the page. And stats showing how many times the page has been viewed.

Nice. Cool, even.

Cool, provided you’re one of the people who don’t mind clicking on shortened URLs. Since a shortened URL doesn’t tell you much about where the link will take you, many people are wary of them. Now the shortened URL can blindside you with even more mystery links. What’s your opinion on that?

How to use it

Want to make a bundle of links?

To make a bit.ly bundle, go to bit.ly and register. It’s free, it’s easy. As a registered user, you can create bundles of links.

Enter your links in a form, then click Bundle. A new page opens where you add titles and other material to your bundle. On this page, you can add or remove links, rearrange links, add titles and descriptions. Then view it or share it. I made a bundle called Places to watch web series programs. Click the link to see the Bundle page. The link I just used is the shortened bit.ly link, which is quick to copy as an option on the bit.ly page. The Share button lets me tweet the link or share to Facebook.

All you need is to register and have an idea for some links you’d like to share in a bundle. Very easy.

The bit.ly bundle page reminds me of what you see when you use paper.li to create a paper from a Twitter list. It’s meant to look good and be engaging. Bit.ly wants you to regard the page as a resource where you’ll stay a while, and perhaps even leave a comment.

What do you think? Are you going to give it a try?

Cross-posted in slightly different form at BlogHer.

State of the Blogosphere for Women Bloggers

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report for 2010 released last week. This year the study focused on female bloggers, although the study was broad ranging and included many topics beyond a discussion of female bloggers.

Technorati issued a series of articles and interviews explaining their findings. The State of the Blogosphere covers a wide range of topics with informative graphs you can browse. Plus, as part of the focus on women bloggers for this year, there are several interesting interviews in the series you may want to investigate.

Focus on women bloggers

Spreading the love – does it help?

This blog does a lot of spreading the love in the form of linking to other blogs and useful articles that I think will be helpful to people who are interested in web design and web education.

I don’t do it because I want return links or mentions on other blogs. I do it to catalog the information that I think is helpful to me and others who share my interests.

The other day I was looking through incoming links and referrals and realized that I get a lot of referrals from spam sites who have no reason to link to me. I think the reasoning from the spammers is that I will see the link in my referrals, click on it, go to their spam site and they can download something malicious to my computer.

What I don’t get are referrals from places where I’ve guest posted, or from BlogHer, or from eHow. Those are places where I would expect to see incoming links and referrals. Nada. It’s as if WordPress never heard of any of those places.

I do see people coming in from searches, from Twitter, from Stumble Upon, and from Facebook. But not from places where there should be incoming links.

Which makes me wonder if the outgoing clicks from my useful link posts even register as incoming links on the target blogs and sites.

Useful links: PLE vs LMS, moving TypePad, camera phones, Google is 12

Here’s an Xtranormal video by patob2000 that is a chat between Personal Learning Environment ( PLE ) and Learning Management System ( LMS ). Which character are you?

Helpful Blogging Links: How Can I Move My TypePad Blog to WordPress has resources for those who are wondering what to do now that TypePad has sold.

How to Capture Good Photos with your Camera Phone. In recent years I see more and more people at events with only the camera in a phone to record it. Here’s help for doing it well.

Google is celebrating its 12th birthday today. It started in 1997. I was watching a season 3 Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 1998 the other day, wondering how the story would change if Giles could Google all that arcane stuff he’s always looking up. By the time I get through season 7 (gotta love Netflix), it will be 2002 in Buffy’s world. Can I expect to see Google in Giles future? Can you remember how different your life was from 1998 to 2002? And from 2002 to now? Phenomenal changes.

What does Google Instant mean to Bloggers?

Google Instant and Bloggers: Write Your Way to Page One by Susan Getgood, author of Professional Blogging for Dummies, prompted me to try some searches as a Google vs. Yahoo! test. The tests were not timed for speed.

Both Google and Yahoo! use Ajax to offer suggested search strings while you are typing. But only Google Instant displays search results under the search box as you type. (I explained this in Google Search is now Google Instant, in case you haven’t seen it in action yet.)

First I searched for ‘fieldset css.’ This blog came up in 4th position on Google for that phrase. It came in 3rd on Yahoo! On Google, the first thing displayed was an ad – inexplicably, I saw an ad for folding tables. On Yahoo! there is no ad.

That’s sort of cheating, because I know the fieldset articles here are popular. How about something less popular? Maybe ‘book reviews’.

This blog is not anywhere in the first page of results on either search engine when I searched for ‘book reviews’. Same result with ‘web design book reviews’. Web Teacher didn’t do well.

Web Teacher didn’t show up on the first page for ‘web design book reviews’? That breaks my heart a bit, especially since there is text right after the blog title that says “Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.” on every page. Note to self: work on this.

Okay, how about a specific book review? Perhaps the one for Professional Blogging for Dummies which I posted here and at BlogHer (in slightly different versions in the two places). At Google, the BlogHer post is listed 4th, with the Web Teacher version indented under it as a related article. At Yahoo!, the BlogHer post shows up in 2nd place, but the Web Teacher version is not listed. Maybe Yahoo! didn’t recognize the differences enough to considered them as separate posts. Or something – who knows.

As I mentioned, I wasn’t doing speed tests or anything remotely scientific. I was mostly noodling around out of curiosity. That said, the major difference was that Google Instant shows the search results before you press Enter to initiate the search. Once you get down to looking through the search results, Google Instant and Yahoo! were basically equivalent. Maybe it’s too early to tell what Google Instant may mean to bloggers in terms of keywords. According to Google Instant and Bloggers: Write Your Way to Page One, bloggers just need to continue to write good content and include relevant keywords in that content.

Guest Post: VPS Hosting: What Is It? How to Pick the Right One?

[Note: this is the first guest post on Web Teacher. I hope to use more guest posts in the future to provide content that I think will be valuable to the readers of this blog. This post by Roko Nastic provides information that educators and students need to know about web hosting.]

A VPS (Virtual Private Server) has become a popular transition tool for webmasters who have outgrown their shared hosting plan, but still do not have the need for a full dedicated server. To understand if a VPS is the best choice for you, it is important to understand what a VPS is and some critical characteristics that you need to keep in mind when choosing the right to fit your needs.

What Is a VPS?

The easiest way to think of a VPS is like a dedicated server, with a few minor differences. A VPS is a single server that utilizes multiple hard drives or a single drive that has been partitioned, for separate users. Limits are placed on each partition to ensure that the lagging problems that are associated with shared hosting do not come into play. Every user has an independent operating system which allows changes to be made without affecting other users. Think of a VPS like you would a giant row of townhouses. They are all part of one unit, but operate independently from each other.

People choose to use a VPS because it offers the same advantages of a dedicated server, yet the multiple users are leveraged to provide a lower priced option. While each VPS does not have the total power or capacity of a dedicated server, they do carry benefits such as independent operating system, root access, and much more.

How to Choose a VPS?

The criteria that is used to choose the perfect VPS varies from person to person, however there are specific factors that must be taken into consideration in order to make a satisfactory choice.

RAM

RAM is always at the top of the list when choosing a VPS. Oftentimes, RAM is a primary factor in determining the overall cost. In fact, it may be the only variable between one account and another. Unlike a shared hosting environment, your RAM will be used to run your own operating system and server. This means that you will be using more RAM for your website than you would in a shared hosting environment.

If your hosting provider offers “burstable” RAM, you may be able to use that RAM in addition to dedicated RAM amount. Burstable RAM is like backup RAM that is used when you get a traffic spike, commonly from Web 2.0 websites such as Digg, Twitter, or Facebook. While this is a great fail-safe, most hosting providers will make you upgrade your account if you consistently tap into the burstable RAM.

Managed or Unmanaged

VPS hosting offers both managed and unmanaged options. As with any type of hosting, the more managed it is, the more expensive it will be and the less control that you will have. However, unmanaged VPS hosting can quickly consume a large amount of your time as well as will require a large amount of technical knowledge. If you are just moving from a shared hosting environment, a managed account is probably the best choice. In an unmanaged environment, the hosting company will only do required reboots, hardware maintenance, and deal with network issues, the rest will be up to you.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is always a concern regardless of what type of hosting package you are looking at. While nearly every hosting company offers unlimited bandwidth, it is important to find out what unlimited really means. If your website caters to visitors from one primary geographic area, it is a good idea to find a hosting company that is with or near that area.

Server Protection/Security

It is important to choose a hosting company that provides exceptional security and monitoring. Certain types of server attacks, such as DDOS attacks, can slow down the entire server to a point where your website will no longer load. If the hosting provider offers adequate monitoring and protection, these attacks can be quickly stopped and even prevented. This is critical to prevent downtime.

Price

A VPS is considered to be a very affordable option, when compared to a dedicated server. Normally, a VPS will start as low as $10 a month. However, as with all services, the more features you want, the more expensive it will be. Additionally, managed VPS environments will always be more expensive than an unmanaged VPS.

Additional Features

There are a variety of additional features that you may want to keep an eye on. It is important to choose a VPS that utilizes a control panel that you are comfortable with. The two most popular options have consistently been cPanel and Plesk. Choosing a control panel that you already know will make managing your VPS much easier and eliminate some of the learning curve. Another feature is the server uptime. Most companies offer a 99% uptime guarantee and anything less is a waste of time and money.

Choosing to utilize a VPS can seem like an overwhelming decision at first. However, once you understand what a VPS is and some of the important characteristics to consider, it doesn’t have to be difficult.

About the author: Roko Nastic is a full time webmaster and blogger passionate in helping other webmasters and website owners create faster, better and more profitable websites. He enjoys writing blog posts and news articles for WebmasterFormat.com and making connections with the like minded bloggers all around the web.